Rambling "life story" | AvPD symptoms over time

hi so doing another video here uh this one's going to be a little less perhaps useful uh it's a little more personal just sort of uh explaining my life story as it as it relates at least somewhat to how i developed my avoidant personality disorder as time went on from more or less the beginning to right now so the main point is to just share a little bit more about myself but i also want to talk about why i think you know certain events contributed to this condition developing in the way it did and you know what could have gone differently all that kind of stuff but it's it's it's mostly just going to be sharing some stuff so um it'll be probably very long even compared to my other videos uh but it's not the sort of thing that it's like there's an easy halfway point there's no good cliff hanger in my life so um just gonna do it in one video uh and if you don't wanna watch the whole thing or if you don't wanna watch the whole thing at once i obviously get that so let's get started so like i mentioned in my first video um my first anxiety symptoms started more or less before i even remember i don't have very many memories of anything before middle school but obviously my parents and such do remember some of the stuff i did so so one thing i mentioned i think in the first video was that i would hide around the preschool i was supposed to be going to rather than actually going in it because i didn't want to deal with it and in elementary school that sort of escalated to me uh feigning sickness like i also mentioned in the in the first video basically until i was around eight or nine years old i could get away with that and then eventually my parents figured out i was bullshitting to get out of school and it didn't really happen anymore but i do remember that and i did that basically because i was super anxious about going to school not for any particular reason usually there were particular things i was uh anxious about even in elementary school so i was anxious about my grades uh even at an age where like you get an e for excellent that's what we're talking about and yet i was still super anxious uh and if i couldn't do my homework perfectly i would basically freak the out and start crying because i i thought i was stupid and i thought other people would see me as super stupid um and another thing about elementary school is that the concept of making friends uh is not something that i uh really understood i had some friends uh but they they pretty much all made me you know it's just like random people sitting next to me started talking to me and i talked back and that's more or less how that went and it just it didn't it didn't even cross my mind as a thing like hey i could go meet that person what are they doing it just it didn't really exist as a concept um so i didn't really get anxious about that at this point um so one one uh interesting anecdote about that is that i meant my who ended up being my best friend and pretty much the only person i still talk to outside of my family i met him in either third grade or earlier the earliest memory i have is third grade but it could have been earlier uh but i basically didn't speak to him until fifth or really even sixth grade that i can remember much at all so uh yeah that's that's the kind of person i was at that point um so definitely some anxiety uh anyway then uh middle school happened and it became a lot more severe and uh this is also when my memories become a lot more complete and uh i wonder if there's a correlation there because this is probably when i started doing my uh over analysis sort of thing that avpd people are definitely known for doing where you know i i i look at everything everybody's doing or saying and try to figure out whether how they could be judging me or criticizing me or that that sort of thing because i'm just super anxious about what everybody thinks about me so i more or less started doing that in middle school not that i was necessarily conscious of it in the same way i am now but i think that's part of why i have more complete memories is because before then i was just kind of you know absent-mindedly drifting and of course you tend to forget things from your youth anyway so it's not that weird but anyway so one of the things that was worse about middle school was presentations class presentations started around middle school to my recollection and uh those those are my first taste of basically permanent anxiety where teacher says there's going to be a presentation and then i'm immediately super anxious even if it's a month away and the assignment will take an hour to complete and 10 minutes to present so i'm immediately super anxious that entire period i have a very hard time like ever stopping thinking about it um and then of course during the presentation i'm super anxious and that's visibly obvious most of the time i that pretty much started as soon as i had to do presentations and never really ended i'm i'm i'm always super visibly anxious and then i'm anxious about it afterwards because you know obviously people saw how i acted and stuff and i'm super worried about what people are gonna think and in middle school it wasn't even really logically obvious to me that that that wasn't the case and it was me over analyzing it which it usually is and i'm usually aware of that now you know like i can at least logically notice that most people don't give a about other people's class presentations they're they're just they're screwing around they're not really paying attention they didn't notice any of that stuff most of the time but i didn't really even consciously consider that in middle school so i was just super anxious about that uh you know anything any mistakes i thought i made whether it's about the the the content of the presentation or uh my physicality or whatever so the concept of friendship uh was a lot more obvious now of course um because you know in elementary school you don't really have autonomy you just you kind of go around with your herd at least at least that's how it is in the american elementary school i went to uh you know you just you do the same thing with the same people all day every day more or less um and in middle school you have all these different classes and you have these different lunch periods and all that and you're just supposed to kind of get used to mingling with different people and you know figuring it out right um so most people see that and they see new people and they make new friends uh and at this point i was i still didn't i was still very uncomfortable with making friends but now it was it was a lot more uh conscious it was like i'm supposed to be doing that just randomly approaching people talking to people even if i think they might be cool it's you know i'm not i'm not really into that so nearly all of the friends i have had my entire life which is to say through high school and five months of college as well as middle school uh befriended me in sixth or seventh grade you know i can't really think of one friend that i made ever um so pretty much all the people i was ever friends with uh made friends with me and the vast majority of them were during middle school there was maybe one person i made friends with in high school that i hadn't spoken to before maybe more it's hard to say but i i don't really think so i also had my first and only sleepover in early middle school and it was at my house and it was with two people who i was good friends with who i had known from elementary school one of whom was that best friend that i still talk to now that i was mentioning uh and i was extremely anxious the entire time and it was definitely a very forced thing where i was like yeah kids are supposed to have sleepovers my sister's doing it you know my my parents say you should do that you want to do that and i'm like no but i i didn't really i didn't necessarily realize that i didn't i was just like yeah i'm supposed to do this so i did that and the whole time i was basically just wanting to go to sleep of course the concept of the sleepovers more or less that you stay up really late and barely sleep and hang out with your friends but that didn't quite track for me and i was just like damn i want to go to sleep um and i did have fun i it to some extent i do i did like those guys and i still do but um you know it it's just that's sort of the first taste of wow i'm not i'm not gonna be able to do these so sort of social events like other people and i never had another sleepover of that sort um we'll talk about the other sort of hangout related things i ever did do but that'll be later so uh also in middle school i started to learn how to program because i wanted to develop video games uh at this point i had first i had been playing video games a long time but i had first started playing games that were actually good in my opinion and so i was like wow that's a whole different thing that's not just for wasting time that's really fun i want to make that and i started making some mods for games and stuff so um yeah i started learning that which isn't directly related to anxiety but um i'll mention how it factors in later and of course it's just kind of what i was doing at that point which may relate in some way so um i also played saxophone in uh the school concert and jazz bands in middle school um more or less i felt like i had to participate in something you know it's the same thing as the sleepover it's like hey which one of these clubs you're gonna do and it's like what do you what do you mean which one i didn't say i wanted to do any of them but again it didn't really occur to me that that was an option or um that there was any particular reason i shouldn't it was just a vague discomfort and kind of disinterest and it's like okay i got to participate in something i do like music though so i did enjoy it to some extent even though i don't really like that sort of music and i never really did but you know i put up with it i like saxophone enough so um and i did have to do uh live performances with this uh but of course the thing is it was it was a band with a whole bunch of people so the for the vast majority of it you know i was still super anxious about it right uh sweating the whole time and in those ugly ass band clothes and um all that sort of thing and the same sort of uh thinking about it all the way beforehand as soon as the date was scheduled and um thinking about anything stupid i did afterwards like slipping or up some of that confusing uniform or something to that extent but i did enjoy it some i do like performing so i i wish i was more comfortable with it but um yeah um and another thing in middle school strangely enough i was sort of friends with the class clown as you might say i it's it's a weird weird phrase that sounds like you're writing a middle grade book but i don't i don't necessarily have a better one and he was also a saxophone player so we hung out and banned as well as some other classes and um sort of hanging out with him made me realize that i actually like being a dumbass you know messing around making jokes that sort of thing in public i i find it funny i like making people laugh but at the same time i find it super embarrassing whenever i do anything stupid or make somebody laugh or something because i feel like it's something about me rather than about what was supposed to be funny or not necessarily trying to make someone else laugh but just having fun trying to laugh myself and then being uncomfortable with the results sort of um so yeah there's that and that was more or less middle school so at that point i definitely had a very noticeable anxiety about a whole lot of things but i wasn't particularly aware of it so then high school started and so we'll start with the the first part of high school freshman year so at the request of that same friend that i was talking about just a minute ago i joined the marching band in uh freshman year and again not particularly into that kind of music um and yeah i mean marching band is obviously a whole lot worse for someone who's anxious than something like concert band is because mistakes are super obvious because you're supposed to be part of a large moving choreography with a whole lot of people so if you step on your foot and trip and run into somebody or get out of place you're supposed to be making a shape from above basically and it's very obvious when you something up um even if they can't see your face or something it's not like anyone was about to come down there and call me out or something people at football games don't give a about the marching band halftime show but nonetheless it was super anxiety inducing you know just thinking about somebody probably noticed whatever dumb i did and laughed about it with their friend and forgot about it and again doesn't really matter but made me super uncomfortable and i still wasn't particularly cognizant of the fact at this point that people probably weren't thinking about it you know it seems obvious and if someone had said that to me yeah i would have been very aware like yeah he probably didn't really care about that um but at the same time it wasn't something that i was necessarily trying to repeat to myself to keep myself calm it just it just didn't come come across basically so and the other thing about that is that i really i really don't like football and so you have to sit in the stands for hours before and after the halftime show which basically involves anxious anticipation and boredom if you don't like football and at the same time this friend of mine as well as uh you know a whole bunch of other people you know have this expectation that i'm supposed to be having fun getting excited you know you randomly play the little pep tunes or whatever when the team scores or some i don't know um and you're supposed to be looking super excited and doing your little dances and uh yeah that didn't particularly fly with me and obviously it made me really anxious because i was trying to pretend like this was something i wanted to do uh but it wasn't and i was not passing as looking like i was enjoying it um which of course just made me more anxious because you know even if people didn't mention it it'd be like yeah it's obvious but a lot of times people did mention it because they were trying to be like yeah have some fun because it didn't occur to them that it was not fun for me and that i was anxious and to them it was just like i was tired or lazy or rolling my eyes or something it's just like just just have fun with it but it didn't really work that way for me also at this time i played bass guitar in a metal band that was comprised almost entirely of friends of mine two of which those people i talked about with the sleepover one of which i still talk to regularly because you know i like metal this the kind of music i actually liked and um i wanted to play bass uh partly just because it was different and partly because uh i you know i always liked the sound i like i liked the deep sound um and i like pick style bass it has a really nice accentuation so i don't know i liked bass so i wanted to do that so i made a band with my friends it was that was actually my idea and like all of this other stuff i'm talking about i actually wanted to do this so i asked these people to do this with me um and in spite of the fact that it was all uh my friends except for one guy who you know i didn't know as well um it was it was still super awkward and it involved having to use practice spaces that other people might show up and mostly we played in the high school band room uh the band director since i was in the band didn't care if i just came in there in the afternoons when nobody else was using it and we played um but you know anyone else can just show up because you know there's plenty of reasons to come in the band room randomly so uh that that stuff was really awkward for me it was really awkward for me in general that um nobody was super into it basically i i don't know whether you know i think maybe some of them agreed to do it because you know this sort of the same thing i was talking about that's just like yeah this guy wants to do it sure i'll try it why not not really that they wanted to or maybe just that they wanted to hang out or or a whole bunch of other things i can't i can't explain why but basically um nobody really cared that much about it except me and maybe that best friend i was talking about um i don't think he cared as much either but he tried basically to put an effort to sort of do what i wanted to do um but in general it didn't really happen i didn't really want to argue with people and say you got to learn this guitar part because like no you don't if you don't want to do this we don't have to do this but at the same time known as being very straightforward that they didn't want to do it which i get that as someone who's super anxious anyway that fell apart and i gave up on that within a year or two i can't remember exactly how long so that was freshman year of high school more or less so then their sophomore and junior year is the next section we're going with here so uh that's when i quit banned marching band realizing uh that i didn't really have to have to do that that's finally when i realized i don't have to do an extracurricular you know there's no reason that i have to do this i don't want to do it and it makes me super anxious and to some extent it it can be good to force yourself to do things that make you anxious definitely that wasn't one of those things it made me very anxious and i was very much not enjoying it and it it was not somehow helping me so i quit banned and also during this time i briefly posted youtube videos of a different sort um you know i was i was playing video games more or less and um i i was doing it in some part because i thought it was fun i thought it was good at the game and i could show people some stuff basically but at the same time it kind of felt like the main reason i ended up doing it was i was basically just fishing fishing for compliments or approval or enjoyment or something from from people commenting on videos and at the same time i was super anxious about what anyone might say that that was negative or just neutral um so i wasn't really enjoying that and it also made me feel you know shitty it's just like do do i really have to do this to pad my pad my shitty ego uh so anyway i quit doing that fairly quickly as well another thing that happened during this time was that i heard that every high school in the county i live in was hiring a tech support technician assistant role which basically was something for one student at the high school to do as a job um that was very simple tech related stuff and um you know i i i was hoping it'd be slightly more in-depth than it was i didn't know quite how simple it was when i got into it but you know i i what what do you expect from this sort of thing really um anyway i i thought about it and it was basically the sort of job that i could get that would be as similar as possible to being a student at the high school because you know i had no choice about that at least the way i saw it i wasn't the sort of person that was going to drop out obviously that would make me super anxious for a whole variety of reasons you know my parents reaction blah blah blah so that that didn't seem in my mind as a possibility so obviously i was going to do high school so since i had to do that anyway well this could be a way to get some job experience um while also essentially being as close to the same thing as just being a student as it as it can be so i don't have to deal with anxiety from that and so basically entailed random tasks helping the the staff of the school with with tech issues uh during the year and it basically replaced a class period it was it was a work program essentially where you could say i'm doing some sort of job and i'll do some minimal paperwork to show why it's helping me learn how to be a better person or whatever um and so i got to skip a class and play with some computers more or less you know we occasionally just exchanged parts but most of the time it was literally just like restarting computers and plugging in keyboards for teachers and stuff you know you know how that is um and then it also entailed a summer job portion which uh was essentially doing maintenance of computers and installation of new computers and stuff other technology projectors and stuff uh around the county over the summer and um that that gave me more anxiety at first because i'm also super anxious about driving which is partially because of the same avoidant personality reasons which is just like i'm super worried what everyone else is going to think of my driving abilities um and i'm not a terrible driver but i'm not a great driver i have some issues i get a really bad headache whenever i have to look backwards so obviously i have a very hard time backing and other stuff like that um and i get super anxious sitting at stops and stuff with people behind me it's like oh i gotta hurry up and turn but i don't have enough time and so yeah um super anxious about that and so i thought that the summer job portion of the job would be would be worse and would give me more anxiety but anyway i decided to give it a try so i got the job and as it turns out the summer job wasn't particularly an issue i definitely did have anxiety about having to drive around to the different places and on occasion my uh supervisor drove me around rather than me drive around um which was definitely you know definitely a little awkward for me not anything he did just you know it's weird that i had had to do that and couldn't just handle it myself but in general i didn't have to interact with many staff at all there were a few front office people there but mostly no one and the other people i worked with other than my supervisor were just other high school students uh from you know other other schools in the county uh maybe maybe there were two for school too i i believe can't really remember that well um but i think that's how it went so the during the school job is what ended up being very stressful um even though i got to skip a class period and not deal with something else stressful um so i basically had to try and be friendly and patient with random staff members that didn't know much about computers and you know like to make jokes or you know they're very busy and so they're kind of snappy as well um and i also often had to work in front of students when i had to fix a if i had to fix a computer or something you know fix is usually we didn't have to do a whole lot but um so students all just staring at you being like what the because they never really talked about this position a whole lot publicly or anything so nobody knew what the hell i was doing they thought it was just randomly basically being the teacher's pet or something and with their computer so that was super awkward and made me very anxious before i had to do it every day and while doing it and after i did it same sort of deal and the program through which i did it instead of a class involved a review by the school's tst which is basically the person i worked for during the school year that the tech support technician and when they did this review for this program they gave me a perfect score except docked one point to specify that i was not friendly enough um and of course that made me feel like but i also felt like it was predictable and it was true and it sort of validated my anxiety uh it definitely was not good and i'm not sure why a person would think saying that was okay because it was very obvious that i wasn't deliberately being rude at least i think i do like i mentioned in the first video i do have some personality traits due to this and maybe not due to it to some extent where people can consume me as being rude because i'm sarcastic and stuff but i i really don't do that around people i'm not comfortable with people i'm not comfortable with it's just like hello you know i i really don't say much um and some people just see that as rude i guess so that was how that went and so i quit that job as senior year was coming up and so then that's where we go next is senior year so in senior year i applied to colleges and uh i didn't get accepted into the school i wanted to go to but i did get accepted to another one that was my other option i only applied to these two um so and that that really made me think and consider why it was that i thought i wanted to go to this school and it you know i was just thinking you know that'd be a lot more work and a lot more anxiety for what and the reason realistically that i wanted to go was because the same reason that i wanted to join band and wanted to join marching band and all these other things uh it's just that's where the direction i was led by other people you know it's just what people do you know if you're a smart kid you're supposed to graduate high school and then go get a college degree and do some sort of career and that's not actually what i wanted for any particular reason you know i did have a degree i was interested in uh you know computer science or some uh relation to that basically because i wanted a program i still was wanting to make video games more or less um so so due to these thoughts basically my anxiety was getting really bad at this point because um i sort of realized not only was i not successful in you know learning or working or playing with others you know i just i couldn't deal with other people but also i didn't particularly have have any real goal here other than what the end point was supposed to be and why was i going to go through all of that for for this big struggle with with no good good outcome basically so um and you know there were there were other things that were making me super anxious at that point because you know obviously at that point i was the last couple years of high school more or less i was starting to realize just how awkward i was consciously not just in a oh it makes me uncomfortable sort of way but in a damn that's that's that's really not good kind of way like so i basically spoken to no no girls my age at any age even in my senior year of high school and when i did you know it was never me starting conversation it was just about everyday and school stuff it was it was never anything romantic or anything like that like i was being weird um even just in normal conversations that i was visibly and audibly anxious in in these conversations and obviously i'm i'm i'm super awkward anyway but with with uh talking to girls it was just the usual avoided personality symptoms but but super amped up because basically i was worried i was going to make them uncomfortable not not because i thought that i was attracted to them or that i wasn't specifically neither one it was just i i was uncomfortable thinking that somebody might think that i thought something like that and so it made me super anxious talking to them um and uh as far as the hangouts i've talked about earlier because i was talking about the sleepover um i pretty much only hung out with that best friend of mine and occasionally with that one other friend a couple times at the at the first friend's house um you know basically basically none at all not not many times and only with this one guy at his house and every time we hung out we played video games that we wanted to play and it was fun but we it's never it it was never like we we did something you know go out and do something with a friend it was i go to his house i play some video games with him in his bedroom basically um and so never really any sort of hang out in public except for occasional school and band trips that obviously i really didn't enjoy especially with the band trips especially with marching band a whole lot had a whole lot of bus rides we go places you know and um that was those those always made me super anxious and i wasn't able to enjoy them at all so you know i didn't i didn't do a whole lot of that stuff on my own ever um just a couple other random school trips and that was about it i'd never really done it i don't go in public and do anything i pretty much never have my entire life so um at this point i was also pretty depressed as well um which that was definitely more new um i was always super stressed and anxious but the depression was pretty new um because i was i was enjoying my main hobbies that i was supposed to like so much less every day so like with playing video games um you know i would be super competitive and i i i could get sick of a game really quick if it if it had something that i thought was stupid um but also um when i'd be playing competitive games online you know i'm i'm very anxious about dealing with other people and i'm very i tend to be angry and impatient uh like i talked about in the first video for a variety of reasons and we'll talk more about this stuff again later but you get the general idea uh so it was hard to enjoy that even though i should be enjoying that because it was just like all this i have to put up with for what might be a few minutes of fun um and i know it's going to piss me off eventually so you know it's kind of hard to bother in the first pl first place same thing with music you know i wanted to play original songs that i wrote in a band but i couldn't deal with a band i couldn't do with my own friends you know how is it going to go better with anybody else and that may not be completely accurate to say but nonetheless that's that's how it felt and of course it would be super difficult anxiety wise to meet up with a whole bunch of people i didn't know especially uh given you know i'm trying to uh play metal and you know like there's definitely stereotypes that to some extent are true of the sort of people that like metal and they're just not necessarily my sort of people in general that's that's not you know obviously that's stereotyping and it's it's sort of stupid but at the same time if you randomly want to go find a guitarist to play in a metal band you know it's it's not necessarily going to be a perfect friend or anything like that right you're just looking for someone to play in a band with and so i couldn't really do anything like that which also made me depressed so i didn't really have anything i wanted to do i wasn't particularly good at doing much of anything and it was getting more difficult to try so i was just sort of like why bother and at this point is when i started feeling uh constantly suicidal and i thought about uh killing myself multiple times every day you know like it's funny because after high school in 2017 or so when i was talking to the psychologist for the first time that i spoke to he was asking me how often i thought about it blah blah blah stuff have you ever planned you know um and he asked me how frequently like how many days a week i thought about it or even a month i don't remember what the time span was but i was like uh dude i think about it constantly multiple times every day uh like thinking about it only one time and realizing hey i hadn't thought about it yet now it's about time to go to bed i only thought about it once you know that was that was a that was a good day um and i was pretty pretty sure i wouldn't ever actually try because like everything else i assumed i would mess up if i attempted suicide and i would just make my life worse in spite of that i researched all the options a whole lot and more or less decided how i would go about it if if i were to and we don't need to get into the specifics of that that's not the point of this but um yeah that's just sort of where my mindset was so um and you know that's that's still there today but it's just it's sort of more quiet numb it's just like i'm used to it right um and i'm not gonna do it i don't think so it's it's not something that's in my mind constantly so now it's more of a how many times a week do you think about it rather than how many times a day which is an improvement uh to some extent for sure so anyway after high school i tried in spite of wondering if there was any reason to try and i attended the nearby college that i was accepted to um and i roomed with a good friend not one of the two i was talking about earlier but a guy i'd been friends with since seventh grade it was essentially the same as a transition from elementary to middle or middle school to high school but but just bigger exponential right so more aware of my anxiety more anxiety and you know more oh more aware of it and fewer skills for dealing with it basically um or or fewer ability less ability to ignore it i'm kind of talking like a clown right now but anyway um so so it's sort of like this this was the last step right you know elementary school middle school high school you're just like yeah getting ready for life and then you realize when you're going to college you're getting a job or whatever it's just sort of at that point where you become an adult by societal standards it's like yep this is the last one this is the end of the road this is the rest of life more or less not that i thought i'd be in college in a dorm for the rest of my life but it's just like this is more or less what life is like you're just going out you're getting your degree and then you're going out and getting your job and it's kind of just you're doing your thing now um and so there's there's nothing to wait for or to look forward to it's just like if if this doesn't work for me then that's just that's all there is right so predictably i had extreme anxiety due to a few different things so one there are very large classes and in some ways that was better than small classes less likely that any individual's eyes are on you in some ways it was worse because there's just a whole stampede of people it's just like it's extreme overstimulation for someone with abpd who's always trying to figure out what everybody's doing or might be thinking about it's just like uh i'm in an atrium there's people every direction what's everybody doing is anyone looking at me so it pros and cons but overall i was super anxious in those classes regardless of whether the largest actually made it much worse or not another thing was uh there were group projects just you know like anything you'd done before except that at this point it's not random football players who don't want to participate in the project or whatever it's other essentially functional adults and i shouldn't say other because i didn't feel like i was and i still don't um so i'm supposed to be essentially working with these people who want to get the degree i'm supposed to be doing a group project with them and they're essentially capable of handling themselves as human beings and i'm not and so i felt like that really stood out and i still do i think it was very obvious that i should not have been there not from an academic perspective but just like i can't do this perspective um and regardless of whether it was true or not it's how i felt that's again sort of the thing with this condition but um another thing that made me super anxious was i had a terrible schedule where i would be late to a class if i walked there from the previous class so what that meant was that i more or less had to take the campus bus and i never got on it even once i because i can't do that i don't everybody's staring at you when you get on it when you get off it and you gotta sit there with all those other people just talking and you know you know looking at you or expecting you to say something randomly depending on who it is obviously not everybody's just gonna randomly talk to you but that's how it feels basically right so i never got on the bus even once and i also realized after the first couple days of walking there and looking at the bus routes there was no way i was going to be on time even if i did get on the bus so um i i didn't really want to go to that class late every day and also my teacher started complaining about me being late every day which i explained why and that it was just not happening um but basically that's that's how it was you can't be late so um that that lack of understanding definitely did not help but in any case i didn't want to be late to the class every day anyway so what did i do i stopped going to that class um and it didn't take long for that to spread to other classes you know because obviously i was super anxious about all of them it's like well i'm already screwing up this one it may as well not bother i did stay in my dorm i did you know complete that semester but the only class i ended up consistently going to was walking class which is literally just the required physical ed credit where uh i literally walked around in a circle in a gym most of the time and walked down the sidewalk to get there and walked back up the sidewalk to go to wherever i was going next which at that point was basically my dorm so just that class wasn't a big deal for me because i basically just listen to music and pace around which i do a lot anyway so it wasn't a big deal and it gave my roommate a little space in the mornings which is another reason that i ended up um deciding to do it you know just he was my friend and i i was already sitting there all the time and i did not want to uh you know be obnoxious so i was like okay you know i gotta at least go to this and get out of here for a little bit um so the classes i did attend related to my major at the start of the semester uh computer science uh were really uninteresting for me and were super basic and not useful based off what i already knew which really wasn't uh because of things i knew it was just it was a super simple class you know if you if you have a college degree you know how this stuff is you're just supposed to take all the super entry-level classes first that are super easy and meaningless because you just got to do that for some reason i guess so they can charge you more is how i see it cynically at least so anyway during that time i i mostly ate frozen food in my dorm with a microwave and because i didn't want to deal with the anxiety of going to the dining hall for the same reasons as everything else um and i only went to the dining hall for dinners when my roommate was already going um and i also ate only a little for me when i did go because you know they only let you get so much food at a time you so you don't waste any you got to come back through the line and i wasn't about to do that just go back to the line by myself looking like a fat ass even though i wasn't um you know it just made me super anxious so i only ever went through the line again when my roommate did which wasn't that much because he just wasn't as much of a glutton as me i guess but anyway um and i also stayed up late all the time as late as i could without bothering him i just playing video games just trying to distract myself from you know the fact that i was wasting my my time here basically and i was so anxious to even go to sleep and i had trouble sleeping in high school and stuff too but it was worse now super anxious and so i would listen to loud music to go to sleep um which probably sounds super weird if you're like most people where you either listen to nothing or you listen to white noise or you listen to asmr or something like that no i was listening to metal at a high volume um just to try to distract myself enough to eventually be able to go to sleep and i still do that some to this day um so i i basically spoke to no one except that roommate the entire semester because you know again super anxious i i wasn't sure how i was supposed to get anything out of it so much trouble to find someone who might be a friend and who might want to be a friend and you go through all this it's not my thing so i never did that and uh one embarrassing anecdote for you since we haven't really had any today and i won't have too many more on one occasion a girl i'd had a crush on out throughout middle school and high school said hi to me and my roommate when we were walking outside and i was completely unable to uh respond whatsoever which was obviously super awkward you know reinforced my usual feelings about myself and all that and that's an example of one of those embarrassments that i'll think about for the rest of my life and still feel like about all right um i mentioned that before it's like you'll do something stupid and it'll burn in your mind for a week or two or whatever longer than normal and then it fades away eventually but it's not gone and anytime you ever feel embarrassed about anything your brain goes hey remember that that was worse like it's trying to help me or something and it definitely doesn't help but that's one of those things that i'll think about forever and feel field feel really anxious and also really bad about because i didn't you know i didn't i just ignored the person basically because i was super uncomfortable and of course i'm sure that neither uh she nor my roommate would remember that at all but that doesn't that doesn't really make any difference right i was i was super anxious about it and i always will be uh so anyway getting past the anecdote and to the summary here uh basically college and so by extension adult life which i talked about earlier this sort of being the last step uh was made me just as anxious and it was just as uninteresting and it felt just as pointless as i thought it would that's the way i saw it and it's it's largely the way i still see it i'm definitely very cynical due to this and not due to this but um i dropped out of college after a semester and yeah so that that was just sort of chalked up as a failure and at the same time instead of classes and for a time after college i made my last attempt more or less in my life at doing something with other people which was i started a team in a video game it was a five versus five video game i tried to play professionally um and this this this team of mine included my my best friend that i've been talking about um that's more or less how i thought it could manage it because we played this game together for i don't know four or five years at this point at that point i can't entirely remember but so he agreed to do this and we found some other people and we try to make it happen for a little time uh basically in short it was a drama club and made me super anxious and i i was on starting it again sort of like the band i tried and failed to take charge of it and you know this had fewer of my friends relative to the total group so i was i was really i was really trying to focus down on be like all right i can do something with other people i'm gonna take charge here i'm gonna make it happen and uh basically at some point my my friend wanted to stop because it was making him super anxious and i was like you know what you're right this because it was just going pretty terribly in every imaginable aspect which you know realistically it wasn't like unbelievably bad or something it was just it was the sort of thing that most people you know it's not like everyone would have stuck with it but they can kind of accept it and calmly end it and try something again basically and that's just that's not how it went for me you know because it's it's just it makes me so anxious and for what return basically you know even if if even if i did succeed in playing a video game professionally what does that really give me even if i'm the best player i get to get a small amount of money for being good at a video game basically given the sort of game was obviously their games that are super popular where you can make a ton but that's not that's not what this game was and um you know what do i get from it is this is this going to fix my anxiety being able to talk to a couple neckbeards online basically to and i don't say that as an insult i'm kind of a negbeard myself but you know not not into the creepy ways just just an awkward joke but anyway i didn't i didn't see what i was gonna get out of it more or less so i quit that as well um so that's that's sort of the whole thing and since then i've spoken to only that one person i talk about uh semi regularly and it's pretty much always through him starting a conversation and it's always through text chat right i i and i occasionally i do occasionally talk to him over voice to play the same video game um but you know i don't i don't go hang out with him i don't have long personal conversations or anything like that and you know as far as i feel right now that's not ever going to happen and obviously you know i hope i hope i'm able to fix this because i i have to be able to do some things that i want to do or there's no point in existing basically right um and also you know i do i do like talking to people some it's really hard to tell the difference sometimes uh whether whether i'm uncomfortable talking to people or whether i don't want to talk to people and it's some of both i i'm a very particular person i think it's just sort of a feedback loop i get used to it and it's like you're interrupting my flow it's really hard to tell but you know i want to talk more about that in a different video which kind of discusses uh why at first i was confused about the difference between schizoid and avoidant personality disorders and why psychologists also were for a long time but now there's a very distinct difference even if it's not particularly evident online it's it's pretty obvious to me what what the differences are um so yeah anyway i haven't seen a friend in person in years i don't really go anywhere in public i've mentioned this before of course but just sort of wrapping up here i've only occasionally gone out to visit doctors so i went to a psychologist and i think 2017 i went to psychiatrist in 2018 and i went to a psychiatri uh psychologist a couple months in 2021 to get my diagnosis and you know i i thought about doing some more uh cognitive behavioral therapy or trying to do some group therapy i didn't like that guy in particular it didn't work out maybe i'll try again later but you know it sort of has to happen when it happens i can't make myself just do it because it's so much work to even even even make myself go to one of those appointments or even think about it as you can tell by the fact that i'm stuttering anxiously i have made a couple different attempts to work i called for an interview to be a pizza delivery driver of course something anyone can handle from a skills perspective i did the interview i got offered the job and i thought i could get over the driving anxiety and the anxiety of knocking around people's doors and trying to get tips and trying not to get yelled at i thought i could get over all that when i did the interview though i figured out it also included regularly just hanging out at the shop and answering the phone i cannot do that like i said i think uh talking on the phone might actually be worse than talking in person because you can't see people's tails basically and it makes you super uncomfortable as someone who relies on staring at people all the time and figuring out what they're doing um not staring at them like eye contact of course you know just looking around keeping an eye on them anyway so i couldn't handle that prospect i rejected the job offer by leaving a message on their phone and i have also since then tried to do random freelance work like you know i can do some web design as a programmer it's not particularly complicated um so one time i i made a proposal on somebody's job requests on a random website basically and receive some mild feedback about what they like changed about the proposal though they generally like it um but it made me feel super embarrassed that they that they said that about it basically and i bailed on it you know that's just sort of the whole criticism thing it's like i feel like they're they're sort of going like yeah that's okay can you can you change that and yeah i couldn't handle it so i gave up on that as well i've done a few other similar things with similar results um i i did release one small video game sold it to a website uh one time i was not proud of the work and i made like 200 for three weeks of work and you know it got poor feedback on the website it was on for reasons that are now very obvious to me it wasn't anything design wise it's just uh basically i didn't bug fix it enough which isn't surprising when you're basically gambling on how much money you'll make for a ton of work but anyway so i and i haven't done that again for obvious reasons to make me feel like every time i think about it still does um yeah so interactions with people at all at this point uh pretty much extend to random you know comments online and like i said i'm super anxious about even leaving text comments um so on rare occasions yeah i've posted stuff on reddit just comments and threads not not whole posts or anything nothing that gets a lot of attention but that still makes me feel super anxious somebody's going to argue with me and of course usually they do it's the internet even if people like what you have to say it's just this it's sort of like i was talking about earlier with the youtube videos i made you're just staring and you're just like okay are they going to upload it do people like this it's like that doesn't matter that's not the point but it's it sort of is the point when you're forcing yourself to do as a really anxious person you're trying to make yourself feel more confident and that's you you can't you don't really take it into your own hands and be like yeah i did that it's like it's the incident it's in your hands if if you think i said something good or smart or insightful then it makes me feel better and if you don't then it doesn't and i'm always worried somebody else is going to think it wasn't even if other people thought that it was was helpful in some way same sort of thing about these videos i'm forcing myself to do it uh because i'm trying to be helpful for other people and to some extent it's helping me to force myself to do this you know it's not like i i'm suddenly going outside leaving my house doing some cool or anything but progressively with each video i feel a little less anxious you know this one's very personal and it looks like it's going to be about an hour long and i don't feel too terrible i'm going to when i post it i always do even though i've only received a whole lot of nice comments um it's it still just makes me feel so stupid like i must have said something dumb or looked stupid or whatever else but uh you know we're doing it and that's the that's the point right now so as sort of the wrap up uh my depression uh has more or less become numb recently just because like i said i'm just getting used to it after six years or so but sort of the takeaway as far as my avoiding personality developing over time is that my anxiety and depression have gotten worse over time regardless of what i did how much i interacted with people in public right and i don't say that to suggest that people with this condition shouldn't try to interact with people because i think at least right now realistically that is your only chance of improving yourself at all but you have to realize that it requires patience and it requires planning and it requires going at your own pace and not not taking someone else's you know an average person's casual remark about come on just go hang out at the bar or something you know whatever the case may be um you you you have to go do stuff like that but also you can't take comments like that to heart and be like yeah i have to go do this right now you you have to take it at your own pace you have to plan to do things that are hopefully going to go positively for you and reinforce the idea that you should keep slowly pushing your boundaries but they need to at least go neutrally and for me neutral is also pretty bad i i really whenever i do something i need to be pretty sure that it's going to go over well that's why with these videos i'm trying to make sure you know i'm not in any way being controversial or weird or anything and i'm sure i failed that to some extent at least in my my view but i i really have to try to do things that i know are going to make me feel better about having done them so that i will try to do other things later so that's that's sort of the takeaway is while while interacting and doing things in public may be the the only way to slowly improve the the conditions of this uh personality disorder not get rid of it but improve it and let you handle it um you you have to uh you have to do it at your own pace slowly and you can't force yourself into it that isn't going to help and i think that sort of shows in in the things i have done through my life and what what sort of happened as a result of them you have to do you and you have to do it slowly um so i've kind of been repeating myself for a bit now i'm getting a little distracted very long video so i'm wrapping up here now um and i'm sure this video was sort of depressing and not necessarily particularly useful except maybe in a relatability sense um but i'm just trying to offer some context to how my life has gone so far and how this disorder has progressed for me and now you know a little bit more about me probably more than i would share with most people so congratulations i guess um anyway i hope this was at least entertaining maybe interesting made you feel a little better if you're dealing with some of the same sort of um so i'm gonna stop this now because this video is super long and i'll see you again later

Channel: Jake - AvPD

Views: 5,854

Keywords:

Id: UBSRqKWttB0

Length: 52min 48sec (3168 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2022